Daily Happiness

Jul. 12th, 2025 08:01 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We had originally been planning to go to Disneyland this morning, but last night I was just feeling tired and suggested we skip our weekend trip since we're going to a show (Paul F. Thompkins' Varietopia again) tomorrow already, and just have one stay at home day. Well, turned out to be for the best because apparently JD Vance is at Disneyland this weekend and so not only is there extremely heightened security inside and protests outside, but the thought of being at the park at the same time as him is a bummer and would just ruin the trip. So we'll just wait and go sometime this week. It's not like we haven't been recently lol.

2. Instead of going to the farmers market or Disneyland, our usual Saturday morning choices, we walked up to a local bagel place and got fancy bagels. We each got two half bagels with different toppings. She got the laika (smoked salmon, cream cheese, pickled red onions, cucumber, capers, and dill) and the scarlett (cream cheese, lightly grilled tomatoes, lemon zest, and chili flakes), and I got the mia (avocado, pickled red onions, chili flakes, and cilantro) and the pre-jam (cream cheese, peaches, honey, and mixed berries). We also got a yuzu strawberry lemonade ice tea and a vanilla orange latte. Everything was so good!

They always have super long lines on the weekends so we've been curious but I'd never been before. Carla's been a couple times on weekdays, when it's not as crowded, but she'd only gotten the scarlett before and hadn't tried anything else. They have online ordering but I didn't know what time Carla would wake up, so I didn't put in an order early, and by the time she woke up around 9:30, there were no more order slots, so we just walked up, but the line wasn't bad yet (maybe fifteen minutes or so and then a bit more of a wait to get the order). Definitely worth it, though.

3. Later in the morning, Carla was talking about some Lush product she'd seen mentioned recently and it got us thinking about Lush again. There was another product she used to use all the time when they had a location here in Santa Monica, but that one's been gone for ages and it was sort of out of sight out of mind. But it turns out there's one at the mall in Culver City, so we decided to go check it out.

We got several things and then headed to the Target at the end of the mall and passed by a super cute hobby shop that had a bunch of knock-off lego type bricks with all sorts of licensed characters, and they also had a bunch of book nooks and other wood craft type stuff and we ended up buying quite a few things lol. Facebook/Instagram has been pushing book nooks on me for a while so it felt like fate. I got one book nook and Carla got three wood craft dinosaur sets and a Kung Fu Panda brick set (this brand is a lot less cheap looking than most non-lego brand bricks I've seen).

I have been trying to find some new plain t-shirts I can wear to work as I currently only have one that both fits well and feels nice (though I do have others that are tolerable). It's really hard for me to find shirts because I am sensitive about fabrics. I usually buy most of my clothes from Target because I don't like shopping and am lazy, but they don't have any good t-shirts right now, so while we were at the mall I checked out Uniqlo and Old Navy, and neither had good shirts (the Uniqlo ones I couldn't even bear to try on because the fabric felt so NOPE to me just from a quick touch), but at least I can mark those off my list of possibilities.

We then went to Target and got some random stuff (mostly food, but also a nice Encanto puzzle) and then while I was waiting for Carla to check out I got a pepperoni cheese pretzel from Auntie Anne's. Haven't eaten there in literal decades, but it was delicious. Also had tasty watermelon lemonade.

Overall it was a very nice trip. We used to go to the mall all the time years and years ago and never go, but this one is not at all dead and has lots of nice shops. Kind of seemed like back in the heyday of malls. We should do that more often!

4. Look at Tuxie's snoot! So cute!

Weekly Reading

Jul. 12th, 2025 05:49 pm
torachan: onoda sakamichi from yowamushi pedal with a huge smile (onoda smile)
[personal profile] torachan
Currently Reading
A Slash of Emerald
82%. Second in the Dr Julia Lewis mystery series. It's been a while since the first one and tbh I've been reading/listening to so many historical murder series that they start to blend together a bit so I don't entirely remember the first one (though I did give it four stars so I clearly liked it) but I feel like I'm enjoying this one even more than the first? It's definitely good.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
4%. Title is self-explanatory. Just started but it seems like an interesting topic!

Kill Her Twice
6%. YA murder mystery set in 1930s LA Chinatown. So far so good, but I've only just gotten started.

Just Happy to Be Here
26%.

Sister Outsider
32%.

Recently Finished
Riding the Rails
This was good! Felt a little repetitive and the best parts were short chapters that focused on individuals rather than the longer chapters that were supposedly organized by topic but kind of wandered a bit.

Murder at the Patel Motel
I really liked this a lot. It looks like the other books the author has written are middle grade and I'm going to check them out, but I hope he does some more mysteries because this was a lot of fun.

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
New Murderbot short story. It's available free here. This is set after the most recent book and is about ART and crew. I enjoyed it.

Astronautical!
Cute middle grade graphic novel set in a universe where a planet has broken apart into little bits and one can travel between the chunks in boats. Things like gravity and oxygen are hand-waved and it's very vibes-based and ultimately a little too silly for me, but it was cute.

Koyubi-sensei no Reiteki Sakusen
New manga by Uguisu Sachiko. This is a single volume collection of what were originally one-shots, so although they have the same characters, there's not really any plot arc. I've read (and scanlated) a couple of the stories but the rest were new to me. I like all her stuff and this was no exception.

Kamonohashi Ron no Kindan Suiri vol. 17
This really feels like it's wrapping up. There was an announcement for the next volume in the back and it was listed as volume 18 rather than final volume, but I would be surprised if it went more than another volume or two after that. tbh I'm fine with that. I've enjoyed the series but I liked it more before it developed an over-arching plot. (My same complaint with Katekyo Hitman Reborn, which also started as a gag manga and evolved into something with silly elements but overall more serious.)

Mission! vol. 4

Saint Young Men vol. 21

Daily Happiness

Jul. 11th, 2025 10:48 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had a pretty laid back day at work today but I am super glad it is the weekend and I have a break for a couple days.

2. I am so glad I was able to get this picture. Jasper: She's lurking again, isn't she?

Daily Happiness

Jul. 10th, 2025 08:49 pm
torachan: john from garfield wearing a party hat and the text "this is boring with hats" (this is boring with hats)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Had a long day today with a lot of driving, but it was a good day. I made three store visits and they were all pleasant and not being made because of some stressfull issues that had to be addressed or anything like that. More of this, please.

2. While I was out, I had a bunch of delicious foods. The first store I went to has a little restaurant that sells freshly made sushi hand rolls and I got those for lunch, including their wagyu beef one, which is so good. Then when I went to the next store, there was a shop in the same shopping center that has mochi donuts and lattes and I got a sakura matcha latte and black sesame mochi donuts.

3. Carla went out shopping today and actually stopped at a different branch of the same mochi donut store and brought home donuts, so I can have more of them for dessert and for breakfast tomorrow!

4. This morning as I was about to leave for work I spotted this silly guy in the laundry.

2025 Disneyland Trip #49 (7/9/25)

Jul. 10th, 2025 08:08 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
We ended up doing another after work trip last night. It was very hot during the day, but had cooled off nicely by the time we got there (though still a bit muggy).

Read more... )

Daily Happiness

Jul. 10th, 2025 12:13 am
torachan: a cartoon owl with the text "everyone is fond of owls" (everyone is fond of owls)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I took one car to the car wash yesterday and the other today and now they both look much better. I will be very glad when they are finally done with the huge construction at the end of our street (should be done by this fall) because it really kicks up a lot of dust. (Even the car I got washed yesterday already has a visible layer of dust coating it by today.)

2. Since I got these new shoes several months back I have noticed them being really squeaky, especially on certain types of flooring. They're so squeaky that I often felt self-conscious about them. After trying a few things, I noticed that the insoles I have for them are slightly too large, even though they are the correct size range for the shoes, and it seems like the part of the insoles in the toe area are where the worst of the squeaking is coming from. So I ordered one size smaller of insoles and have been wearing those for the past week and the squeaking is almost totally gone! They still make a little noise once in a while, but it's like 99.9% reduced. The restroom at work was one of the worst offenders, so the first time I was able to test them in there and they weren't squeaking up a storm, I knew they'd be okay everywhere.

3. We went down to Disneyland tonight for dinner. It's been hot during the day this week but was much nicer by the time we got down there (and the sun was going down by then).

4. I finished another puzzle this morning. This is my first time doing a puzzle that wasn't square, so that was an interesting twist. I usually do the edges of a puzzle first, but I couldn't do that with this one because most of the edge pieces were tiny and didn't even interlock with each other, just with the next layer of pieces in from them.



5. Gemma looks very disturbed to realize that I've seen her.

Daily Happiness

Jul. 8th, 2025 09:18 pm
torachan: a cartoon bear eating a large sausage (magical talking bear prostitute)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had a dentist appointment this morning and got that new cavity taken care of. Thankfully it was a small one and didn't take them long to fix. (Also because it was just a small one, with my insurance it was only $29! The cleaning was way more than that!)

2. Look at that blep!

Daily Happiness

Jul. 7th, 2025 08:24 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I did indeed have a WFH day today and it was pretty chill. Got everything on my to-do list done and had two good web interviews.

2. I'm really enjoying Mario Kart World. And just ten more days until the new Donkey Kong game, which looks like it will be amazing!

3. Molly is demonstrating the proper way to help at the computer.

Daily Happiness

Jul. 6th, 2025 08:20 pm
torachan: tavros from homestuck dressed as pupa pan (pupa pan)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We walked down to our favorite deli this morning to pick up sandwiches for lunch. The UV index was pretty high today so even though we tried to stick to the shade as much as possible, it was still exhausting being out in that level of sun, but the temperature was nice and there was a good breeze every now and then and it was a very nice walk overall.

2. Back to work tomorrow. :( Thinking of maybe making it a WFH day, though. So far the only meeting-like things I have are two web interviews, so that can be done from home, and I've got a lot of desk work and email to catch up on from the three-day weekend. So if no one comes up with anything urgent that needs me in person I think I'll stay home.

3. Tuxie is so handsome!

crafty_packrat: (foodie)
[personal profile] crafty_packrat
Bacon-cheese wheel, almond croissant, apricots (!!), red plums, strawberries, yellow raspberries, black raspberries, sour cherries (pie!), donut nectarines, strawberry lemonade, a gallon of herbal lemonade, brown sugar kettle corn, caramel kettle corn.

Next week I will buy red sweet cherries (for ketchup) and peaches (for salsa), and actually enter my canning in the county's agricultural fair this year.

Fun fact, red currants used to be illegal to plant in the United States -- they are the second host for white pine blister rust disease, and that is a threat to the lumber industry as white pine is very susceptible to it. This is why purple candy in the USA is grape-flavored, while in Europe purple candy is currant-flavored; we didn't *have* currants (or gooseberries) legally for almost 100 years.

Steam Summer Sale

Jul. 6th, 2025 09:51 am
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
[personal profile] lea_hazel
BTW, since I posted about this to Tumblr, too, Turncoat Chronicle is 34% off on Steam until July 10th.

Overall reviews on Steam are positive! It's 180K thousand interactive novel where you play the heir to a usurper king, confronted with the grown heir of your father's old enemies. Choose between allying with the rightful heir (thus turning on your father), or forming a false friendship, then betraying them to your father. Or stab them both in the back and crown yourself.

In between, there's an aloof spymaster, a serene royal consort, a bratty younger brother, and, of course, the loyal guard who, with just a little bit of polish, can be passed off as a false-real-heir.

Daily Happiness

Jul. 5th, 2025 07:55 pm
torachan: tavros from homestuck dressed as pupa pan (pupa pan)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We had such a nice time at Disneyland this morning. Too sunny but otherwise lovely weather and so few crowds!

2. We stopped at the farmers market on the way home and got some stuff from our usual vendors (the fruit leather guy definitely knows me now) but there was also a new vendor, a vegan Jewish deli that had all sorts of interesting stuff. Carla got a jar of some sort of pickle relish and I got some pastries including a stone fruit "cheese" danish (idk what the cheese was but everything was vegan so it wasn't actually dairy) that was super good and a pistachio cardamom apricot hamantaschen, which I haven't tried yet but that flavor combo is a favorite so I have high hopes.

3. I love that feeling on the middle day of a three day weekend when you realize that you don't have work tomorrow. That keeps happening throughout the day and it's a pleasant surprise every time. Definitely looking forward to one more day of rest.

4. Jasper's definitely got the relaxing down.

2025 Disneyland Trip #48 (7/5/25)

Jul. 5th, 2025 04:24 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
We were expecting it to be crowded today because of the holiday weekend but it was actually one of the least crowded days we've ever experienced at the parks.

Read more... )

Daily Happiness

Jul. 4th, 2025 09:10 pm
torachan: ryu from kimi ni todoke eating ramen (ramen)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had a pretty relaxing day today. Aside from walking up to the store this morning for pie crust and salad stuff, I did not go anywhere and just chilled at home.

2. I got some of the rhubarb I chopped up and froze a few weeks ago out of the freezer and made another pie. There's still four bags (I didn't divide it that way on purpose but it turns out two bags is exactly enough for one pie).

3. Ollie is such a cutie pie.

Weekly Reading

Jul. 4th, 2025 06:07 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Currently Reading
Murder at the Patel Motel
39%. This is not actually a book, so much as an audio drama. It's an Audible Original and comes free with membership, so I decided to try it out. Turns out the author and voice of the main character is the guy who played Jack's assistant on 30 Rock. I loved him in that! And I'm liking this "book" a lot so far.

Just Happy to Be Here
11%. YA about a South Asian trans girl's experience at a mostly white all girls' high school. It's all right so far.

Sister Outsider
No progress.

Riding the Rails
48%.

Recently Finished
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
I felt like this took ages to finish, but it was a good read. Very interesting stuff.

A Terrible Nasty Business
I really want more books in this series.

Sou Iu Ie no Ko no Hanashi vol. 1
New series from Shimura Takako following three characters who were raised in the same new religion (the religion in the story is not any real one, just based on others), marking them as different from the majority of the population, which is not actively religious. I like pretty much everything by Shimura Takako, so I'm curious to see where this goes.

Tsumetakute Yawaraka vol. 5

Hatsukoi no Tsugi vol. 2

2025 Disneyland Trip #47 (7/3/25)

Jul. 4th, 2025 02:30 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
[personal profile] torachan
This was another last minute decision. With the lower level keyholders blocked out for summer there's almost always same-day availability, so might as well take advantage of it.

Read more... )

Daily Happiness

Jul. 3rd, 2025 11:59 pm
torachan: arale from dr slump with a huge grin on her face (arale)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Three day weekend! I'm looking forward to relaxing and not doing much.

2. I had two interviews today and both of them stood me up, but the good thing is that I was doing them from home, so I hadn't gone out of my way for them and wasn't particularly inconvenienced.

3. We decided to go to Disneyland for dinner. Had a lovely time, though it was a bit more trafficy both going and coming than I would prefer.

4. Suspicious Gemma.

(no subject)

Jul. 3rd, 2025 11:21 am
lotesse: (Default)
[personal profile] lotesse
Alas that stress also means need for dentist. I think the filling repair my dentist did last month already broke; it might not be the only bit of my dentistry crumbling under the current tension levels. And going to the dentist is so painful and scary :(

Daily Happiness

Jul. 2nd, 2025 09:21 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Today was kind of a long day but I did get stuff done.

2. Just one more day of work this week and then three day weekend!

3. Finished another puzzle today. This is from the multi-puzzle box of Disney 70th anniversary puzzles. I really love this design, and they've got a fair bit of merch using it, too, but sadly not anything I actually need (and not even much that I particularly want).



4. Chloe loves lying on Carla's bed by the window.

What We Weading Wednesday

Jul. 2nd, 2025 02:46 pm
white_aster: stacks of books (books)
[personal profile] white_aster
 

Not...dead...yet.  

Forget where I was, but here's what I've finished lately.

  • Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes - I liked this!  I liked Dead Silence (great vibes) and HaTEd Ghost Station (because so much of it didn't make sense to me, plotwise).  I felt this was also in the "fun creepy vibes" category.  The resolution was kind of simple, but hey, solid space horror.
  • Into the Broken Lands by Tanya Huff - I...am glad I read this.  Unsure if I "liked" it, but it was kind of a strange book.  Imagine...Murderbot in a fantasy setting, with mages who broke part of the world and left it a reality-challenged wasteland, but not before they left behind a lot of very powerful mage-engineered devices, including some humanoid engineered "weapons".  That was the part I liked, because it did have some interesting (though kind of overwrought) things to say about defining personhood, and the "weapon" got much more POV than it usually does (Murderbot notwithstanding).  There was also one of the most delicately done and interesting corruption arcs I've ever seen done, and that got it up out of 2-star territory for me, but overall it sat around 3 or 3.5.  I felt it touched on things I liked but consistently didn't quite hit the beats square enough to get to 4 stars.  It wasn't helped by having a very, very annoying set of characters that I hated having to see so much of.
  • The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong.  I liked this a lot.  Cozy, but not too cozy in my view:  there was tension and problems and emotions and yes, everything worked out, but that's why I'm over reading cozy anyway, so I felt that was fine.
  • The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher.  Solid ending to this duology, though it felt very slow for most of it.  The ending was a banger, though, and raised it back up into solid 3.5 star territory for me.

Currently I'm reading Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove, and after a wobble at the start where I was kind of unsure if I was going to like the main AI character, it GRABBED me and I've loved it ever since.


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Sarasvati

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